Financial firms are responsible for ensuring that traders maintain integrity in the markets. This is a complicated, time-sensitive challenge that entails analyzing large amounts of structured and unstructured market, trading and communications data. Compliance departments use the results of the analysis to monitor for potential market abuse or manipulation by traders. Occasionally, the results of the analysis will generate an alert that will prompt further investigation into trader activity. When an investigation occurs, users need to swiftly understand the sequence of orders and executed transactions, how the instruments were traded, where the transactions occurred, the relationship of the trades to account owners, what communication was associated with the transactions, and other information relevant to the trade.
Conventionally, information relating to transactions has been displayed either in textual grid format or in a time-dependent graph. A grid has primarily text content, for example, a specific transaction ID aligned with related transaction information in columnar format. This allows elements to be sorted by a single dimension only. In contrast, a graph format typically displays, for example, price fluctuation as a function of time, and may allow hovering over a specific transaction to display additional transaction information. However, neither of these conventional display formats shows all transactions associated with a specific alert, with the sequence and relationship between them.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,438,089 describes a method and apparatus for transaction verification which includes matching transaction details with a record of communications between parties regarding a transaction event. In the system, alerts may be generated to flag a transaction based on a matching score comparing the transaction record with the details of the transaction. However, heretofore there has not been a system of transaction tracking which permits a view of transactions relating to an alert (or other criteria) that shows the relationship between the transactions. The disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 8,438,089 is incorporated by reference.